I noticed that, in OSC books, when entities come together under a leader to form something bigger they lose all their identity. I understood philotic threads in a human to each form every atom of the body but there is one bigger philote that then takes over their identities and creates the persons self. Also the mob that killed the piggies all the people started thinking the same way and had the same motives and ended up doing the same things. To a lesser degree this also occurs in battle school. The army leaders make sure that all their underlings can shoot the same and maneuver the same. The soldiers were also trained to be in a formation where it doesn’t matter if they switch places with another soldier, because all they are is a number that shoots without thought at the enemy. The buggers show this lack of identity under a leader. The workers all have the same will which is entirely controlled by the queen.
I was wondering if anybody else noticed this trend or if people think I am connecting strings that just don’t belong together. Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
I think you're partially correct, in the sense that you've identified that an important part of teamwork is having everyone on the same page.... If everyone is trained to do certain things exactly the same way, that makes people interchangeable. Which, in a combat or military setting, is of supreme importance.
Where I think you're wrong is that this constitutes a person losing his identity.
Keep in mind that there are different jobs that have to be performed by this team. Different people doing different things as part of the overall strategy. Now, even though the team members have all been trained to behave exactly the same way, as it pertains to whatever job they are doing, a good leader would assign those team members to their specific jobs based upon their strengths and weaknesses as individuals.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It's important to note that Ender's main advantage over the Hive Queen was the individuality that was maintained. There's a good scene where Mazer shows how cohesive yet individual Ender's fleets are.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
Um ... I just reread EG and am rereading ES right now, and what I see - the military doctrine that I propound - is distributed command. Ender fragments his army's command structure, delegating authority more widely, and leaves enormous initiative to his toon leaders.
He TRAINS all his soldiers - but there is no such thing as a good commander who does not do this. They are all taught the skills and habits they need to survive. Anything else is like deciding your soldiers should die (in real combat). But, as any officer can tell you, training does not make soldiers IDENTICAL, but it does allow them all to stay alive long enough for their individual strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield to emerge.
It's the UNtrained soldiers who all become identical ... because corpses are remarkably similar in battle.
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